BootheNet.com

So I just agreed to a trade on BGG. I’m trading my copy of Descent Journeys in the Dark for a copy of Union Pacific.

I really like Descent. I rate it an 8, still do, and we actually still play it a lot. However, we always play KF’s copy. And he has a few expansions too. I don’t have any expansions. If you’ve never played the game, it’s soft of Dungeons & Dragons without the roleplaying. It’s the tactical Miniature monster fight portion of the game.

I actually got the game in a trade a couple of years ago. In that time. I don’t think we’ve played my copy of the game a single time. Maybe once.

Union Pacific has a little bit of promise though. It’s sort of a precursor to Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride with a stock element. Maybe a step up from Ticket to Ride, but a step down from Age of Steam. Eh, I don’t know it sounded interesting. It might only be a temporary addition to the game library.

In any case, Volumewise, I’m gaining some shelf space. Descent is in one of the Fantasy Flight Games Coffin sized boxes. Union Pacific is in a box similar to the size of Samurai, and Downfall of Pompeii I think.

written by Chris \\ tags: Age of Steam, Boardgames, Descent, Fantasy Flight Games, Ticket to Ride, Trade, Union Pacific

So, It looks like I just played my fastest nethack game ever. And I’m definitely not counting a game where you just leave the Dungeons of Doom on the first turn by walking up the stairs you came down on. I’m talking about legitimately sitting down to play a game and see how far you can get.

So this one lasted 28 moves, and is the only game where the entire message log appears in my character dumpfile.

I’ve decided to attach this dumpfile so that you guys can laugh at my stupid mistake of stepping on a dart trap with a rogue. Previously, the fastest I had died was getting killed by a Succubus after drinking from a fountain on lvl 1. But I think that game went like 140 moves or so.

cboothe, chaotic male human Rogue

                              ---------
                  ---.---  # #.<......+
                  |......  ###|...$...|
                  |.....|  # #-........
                  |.....| ### ---------
   ------+---   ##....%.|# #
   |........|   # |.....|##
   |....@....#### |......#
   |........|     -------#
   |..>......
   ----------

Cboothe the Footpad     St:10 Dx:18 Co:11 In:14 Wi:11 Ch:11  Chaotic
Dlvl:1  $:0  HP:0(12) Pw:2(2) AC:7  Xp:1/1 T:28

Latest messages
  Hello cboothe, welcome to NetHack!  You are a chaotic male human Rogue.
  What do you want to ready? [- b or ?*]
  d - an uncursed potion of sickness (in quiver).
  What do you want to ready? [- b or ?*]
  b - 12 +0 daggers (in quiver).
  #
  What do you want to adjust? [a-f or ?*]
  Adjust letter to what [eg-zA-Z]?
  Moving: l - an uncursed lock pick.
  In what direction?
  You destroy the kobold zombie!
  b - a +0 dagger (in quiver).
  #
  Name an individual object? [ynq] (q)
  What do you want to name? [a-dfl or ?*]
  What do you want to name these daggers?
  A little dart shoots out at you!
  You are hit by a little dart.
  The poison was deadly...

Your inventory
  Weapons
  b - 12 +0 daggers named ammo (in quiver)
  a - a +0 short sword (weapon in hand)
  Armor
  c - an uncursed +1 leather armor (being worn)
  Potions
  d - an uncursed potion of sickness
  Tools
  l - an uncursed lock pick
  f - an uncursed sack

The sack is empty.

Final attributes
  You were fervently aligned
  Your alignment was  10
  You were stealthy
  You are dead 

You didn't know any spells.

Vanquished creatures
  a kobold zombie

Voluntary challenges
  You went without food
  You were an atheist
  You never hit with a wielded weapon
  You were illiterate
  You never genocided any monsters
  You never polymorphed an object
  You never changed form
  You used no wishes

written by Chris \\ tags: Nethack, Video Games

Alright, so it’s out a little later than I would like, but here you go. My Five & Dimes lists and what I think about them.

General Comments. I really diversified this year it looks like. Which I hope to do less of in the future. I really wish that I would play games I love more than playing a game I’ve never played. This year, that didn’t happen much, except with those games that others in my group love that I like as well, and usually am quite happy to play.

Dimes
Werewolf 30 – I don’t see werewolf not making my dime list any year for probably the rest of my life. I love this game, and whenever I get enough people together for a game, I tend to be interested in getting it played and pushing it onto people.

Cities 10 – I played this one for the first time in March of this year at Tennessee Games Day. I loved it, and immediately purchased a copy of the game. It’s got a lot going for it for the insanely quick play time. Most of the plays of this game happen back to back as well, as usually since it’s over in about 15 minutes, people tend to want to try it again. Couple that with three totally different scoring methods, and you have a really great filler that will probably show up for a long time to come.

Nickels
Battlestar Galactica 8 – Love this game, not so sure about the expansion yet, bu this game is really good, with an awesome theme. This one will likely be somewhere on this list next year too, as nearly everyone I know loves it too.

Ghost Stories 8 – I really liked this game a lot when I first started playing it, and we played it several times, but it is starting to feel samey to me now, and I don’t know that it will get very many plays over the next year. I tend to think that Pandemic, BSG, and Shadows will steal back my Coop game plays away from this one.

No Thanks! 8 – Really love this filler, but sometimes forget it’s in the shelf since the box is so small, I need to do like my friend MA and just keep up with lists for different numbers of players of everything that I have available. I need to set up a database before I can do that though, as I doubt I’ll want to update the lists that much.

Race for the Galaxy 8 – Love this game too, and it got a lot of play at the beginning of the year, but suffers from the same problem as some of the other fillers in that I have this one in a small box for space reasons, and I tend to forget about it when we’re looking for something to play.

Zendo 7 – This one has some lovers and some haters in our group, but I tend to find when I’m at a convention, there’s always a little time for at least a few rules to get done.

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game 6 – This game is so much fun, although it has a lot of luck and stuff, but makes up for it with theme, and with the story you get to tell everyone about how your game went when you are finished.

Manila 6 – Manila is a great little gambling game, that I consciously tried to get played more this year. Glad to see it made the list. I tend to speed this one up a tad by starting them on the 0’s rather than the bottom level. I think that makes it a little more tolerable, by cutting at least 20 minutes off the game.

Bang! 5 – Played a lot at the beginning of the year, when we were still going to the OMGA Group, but this one waned late in the year when we had a core group that met every week. This one will always get some play, just not sure how much among the weekly game group. Probably none.

FITS 5 – Found this one and bought it at the same time I bought Cities. This one has replaced Ubongo as my puzzle game introducer to new people. As this one is puzzly like Ubongo, but has much better and easier scoring.

Manoeuvre 5 – Glad this one made it onto the list too. I don’t tend to play a lot of two player only games, but this is one of the first ones that I have liked to grab when it was appropriate. I really like the different aspects of the armies, and how they interact with each other.

Small World 5 – And finally Small World. Days of wonder game from this year, and not one that I would have picked up if it wasn’t for an insanely good deal. But I’m glad I did, everyone likes it, I like it enough to play it, and my problems with always having the same board can be addressed with a variant online. This one is a good one for introducing Axis & Allies/Risk players to New style board gaming as well.

Conclusion
So, that’s all I’ve got for this year, there are a few that just barely missed the cut, but I’ve decided not to talk about them at all out of respect for the format. Hopefully it will give me incentive to try to get one or two of the honorable mentions into the fray next year.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Play Statistics, playlists

So, as I look back upon my purging for 2009. Which has basically become a permanent goal since I stopped buying basically anything new and different some time toward the end of 2007 or so. I would like to reflect upon where I stand right now in relation to where I wish I stood.

As of the end of 2009 I officially stand at 258 games listed in my collection in BGG. Many of those are Expansions (Nearly 20 in Age of Steam and Power Grid Expansions alone) So I think that’s a pretty good number. I wish it was actually under 200, but with the expansions I’ve put in, and hardly take any shelf space at all when I put them in the main games boxes, it’s kind of hard to trim it much more.

I fudge those numbers a little bit. Some expansions I fail to list due to principle, like the Agricola Z deck, or the Chuck No-Rice card in Ghost Stories. This was a change sometime this year due to some changes in the way BGG split out games when they add RPG Geek. Whether or not an expansion gets listed depends upon a few factors, but either way, if I list them, they count to the total, if I don’t they don’t.

I also have one game coming ‘Republic of Rome’ which I received as a Christmas Present from Val, but as of yet, has been deemed dangerous by the US government and has not left customs inspections.

So, let’s see how I’ve done. After I get Republic of Rome, that will put me at 259 games.

End of 2007, 270
End of 2008, 262

Well, I guess I’m not going very quickly at this am I? I do okay, I don’t add very much during the year at least, and I get rid of at least a couple of more games than I actually add. Which is a good thing, but still, I’ve really technically only dropped 11 games in two years. Which is horrible, but at least it’s better than when they were shooting way up in 2005 and 2006.

Goal for this year. Drop to below 250 BGG Listed games. Using my principles of listing. Unfortunately, this means some games will be impossible to get rid of (Chess, Euchre, Poker, etc.) Just means I’ll have to take the axe to at least 9 more games at some point during the year. And possibly to more depending upon if there’s any that I want to add or subtract.

I’d also like to clean up the game room shelves a little bit. I suppose that’s sort of this same resolution, but I mean, I’d like to get everything into one place sometime. Tired of having to go looking for something if I want to find it, they should all be contained on my two shelves.

I’m working on a Five and Dime post too, but that will probably be a couple of days.

written by Chris \\ tags: BGG, Boardgames, Purge

Just wanted to drop in a note to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

I took some pictures, Val took some as well. I’ve got mine in right now. I’ll put Val’s in the album later. Here’s the link to the album:

I also managed take some video. Now, I didn’t do any video editing at all. But I cobbled the raw video I took together just trying to get it out fast. So here it is. I apologize for shaky video and stuff, I’ll probably take this down in a couple of weeks.

I ended up getting Valerie an iPod Touch, there are tons of great apps and stuff, and with the home sharing, we only have to buy them once between us. But since her phone is provided by the school, there’s no reason for her to get an iPhone. So hopefully, she’ll enjoy it.

I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. *strange looks* Yes, I already had an Xbox 360. But unfortunately, it broke on Wednesday Evening, I was playing Fight Night Round 4 on it, and it lost the Red Colorstream, then after a little while longer, it finally gave up the ghost and quick outputting video altogether. I tried the composite cable as well, and it did the same thing. Started looking it up, seems to happen sometimes to people, and the Xbox was way out of warranty.

Unfortunately, though I don’t play too many games on it, it has become a staple in our home mainly for the streaming of Netflix to our HD TV. So it had to be replaced (It didn’t hurt that I still haven’t quite finished Dragon Age and need to do so). Anyway, So, I ended up getting an Xbox Elite. It’s much quieter than the other one, plus it has an HDMI port on it, which will be nice if I ever pick up a cable.

Alright, well, once again. Merry Christmas Everyone!!

written by Chris \\ tags: Christmas, Pictures, Video, Xbox